‘Seafood and Eat It’ At Port Canaveral Seafood and Music Festival February 26-28

The Port Canaveral Seafood and Music Festival will feature a large and diverse variety of seafood and other food choices for the public during the three-day festival, February 26-29 at Port Canaveral.

BREVARD COUNTY • PORT CANAVERAL, FLORIDA – The Port Canaveral Seafood and Music Festival will feature a large and diverse variety of seafood and other food choices for the public during the three-day festival, February 26-29 at Port Canaveral.

Lobster, aka Maine’s red gold, is one of the gustatory stars of the Port Canaveral Seafood and Music Fest, a weekend jammed with great music and fantastic food.

From 5 p.m., Friday, Feb. 26 to the evening hours on Sunday, Feb. 28, the Exploration Tower at Port Canaveral will be the place for grazing on seafood and listening to top musical entertainers perform live on the Space Coast Daily Stage.

“King Lobstah” will be joined by shrimp, clams, oysters and other princes of the deep during this seafood extravaganza. For seafood lovers and music lovers, this will be a weekend to remember.

“We will have a terrific amount and variety of seafood on offer at the festival,” said Giles Malone, partner in Maverick Multimedia and Brevard Productions, publishers of Space Coast Daily and organizers of the festival.

Francine Quigley from New Jersey will offer her Clam Stew at the festival.

“Top-class seafood vendors will join us from here at the Port and from all across the USA to satisfy every appetite. We thought of the landlubbers, too, and we’re also offering lots of great BBQ and other food choices.”

Seafood vendors have been selected for the variety of dishes they bring to the festival table. Familiar faces in Brevard restaurant scene such as Fishlips Waterfront Grill, Milliken’s Reef, Rusty’s and Wild Ocean Seafood Market, will be dishing out their specialties.

Baja Chowder and Seafood will serve its famous Chowder which was enjoyed by hundreds during the recent Cocoa Beach Area Chamber of Commerce Chowder Cookoff.

“This is going to be an awesome festival and a great way for us to showcase The Cove and all our terrific Cove Merchants in our association,” said Mike Schwarz, owner of Fishlips Waterfront Bar and Grill.

Francine Grigley of Jersey Girl Superfoods with Attitude thinks she may don a pirate costume when serving her festival fare. At the recent Renaissance Fair on Wickham Park, she was decked out appropriately as the “Jersey wench” who served “ye old pub grub.”

“One of my first jobs in New Jersey was working at Cap’n Cat Clam Bar,” said Grigley, who adds that she makes it a point to revisit the restaurant whenever she revisits her old Garden State stomping grounds.

Shrimp cocktails will be offered by Jersey Girl Superfoods at the festival.

For the Port Canaveral Seafood and Music Festival, Grigley plans to feature clam stew Jersey style, as in very traditional and very filling.

Her food truck will also serve shrimp cocktails, prepared with fresh, still warm shrimp with lots of spices, cocktail sauce and drawn butter, just as she remembered from her Jersey days.

From New Jersey is not too far to visit Maryland, at least by way of Willy T’s Crab Shack, home of Maryland-style crab cakes. For their legendary authentic Maryland-style crab cake sandwich, Willy T’s chefs start with generous portions of lump blue crab meat, to which is added the company’s “World Famous Secret Family Recipe” spices before being deep-fried to perfection.

The sandwiches are served on artisanal buttery brioche buns with lettuce and tomato on the side.

Willy T’s also features mini versions of the crab cakes and spicy shrimp sandwiches, as well as crab salad and shrimp and clam baskets.

Fans of the television hit “Shark Tank” may remember Portland, Maine cousins Jim Tselikis and Sabin Lomax, who wowed the “sharks” with their proposal for expansion of their Cousins Maine Lobster food trucks.

ABOVE VIDEO:Cousins Maine Lobster will be featured at the Port Canaveral Seafood and Music Festival.

Orlando resident Kevin Anderson saw the show and was so impressed by what the Cousins offered, he bought into their franchise.

“They grew up in the lobster business and know what they’re talking about,” said Anderson. “Their recipes are so good, they couldn’t keep up with the demand.”

Catch both amazingly tasty options such as Key Est Grilled Grouper and pan-seared ahi tuna as well as some delicious deep-fried dishes such as the Blue Lava Shrimp Taco and island-style shrimp entrees.

These are just for starters, folks. There’s plenty of more seafood to discover by the Exploration Tower.

Richard Cockerel with his What’s The Catch unique Airstream trailer will offer some delicious tuna.

Because man lives by more than seafood alone, the festival features an international beer and wine pavilion, an arts and crafts show, a children’s activity zone and special events such as the Pirates’ Parade and Party, when several pirate krewes, including the Brethren of the Space Coast Pirates’ Krewe, strut their stuff.

The shark shows, as well as the pirate parade and party, are free with festival admission.

CLINT BLACK, DIRTY HEADS, ORIGINAL WAILERS HEADLINE

Port Canaveral Seafood and Music Festival headliners include country legend Clint Black, above, on Saturday, the Dirty Heads on Friday and the Original Wailers and Third World on Sunday.

And then there is the music.

Headliners include country legend Clint Black on Saturday, the Dirty Heads on Friday and the Original Wailers and Third World on Sunday.

The festival has also invited some of Central Florida’s best bands and entertainers, including General Eyes, Coastal Breed, Smokin Country and The Usual Suspects, to take to the WRRJ Waterfront Stage for nonstop music that begins at 5 p.m. on Friday and at 11 a.m. on Saturday and Sunday.